Dressed to impress

Basking through winter skies

catching the sun, your metal skin

has the angular thrust of a shark’s fin

poets should celebrate your glories.

Rising on stilts above an agora

your pleasing palette of orange and green

seems to reconfigure the street scene –

you are a temple to Athena.

As if this were ancient Alexandria

you are home to a million stories

a towering knowledge repository.

You are a magnet, a cynosure.

Dressed in your coat of verdigris

you impress, you are Peckham library.